Ensuring a Genuine Level Playing Field with the EU Post-Brexit

Abstract

The EU claims that it wishes to negotiate the future trading relationship with the UK on the basis of a ‘level playing field’. However, the EU’s published negotiating guidelines actually seek to impose on the UK a very unlevel playing field – in goods, services, capital markets and financial services, citizens’ rights, mobility of persons, fishing, state aid, taxation, standards and regulation, governance, dumping, and sequencing. This amounts to ‘cherry picking’ by the EU which UK negotiators should vigorously resist.